Alejandro Escovedo

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Saturday, February 10, finds us at a 10:00pm pop-up event at the Saxon Pub. Alejandro Escovedo is having a show accompanied by a drummer and keyboard/violinist. We had seen him earlier at the Texas Songwriters celebration at the Moody/ACL Theatre but this is an up close and personal event in a small club.  I gather the club has room for about 140 patrons, we have reserved seats up front at a small table only inches from the stage.

The club is only a few blocks away on Lamar South but we take an Uber ride — there's virtually no parking there. There's already a queue but we have reserved seats and there's a fellow processing the queue to make sure everyone is on the list and gets an arm band to enter. While we're waiting the previous band is clearing out and Alejandro's band is setting up.

It's a sold out house of devoted fans to hear stripped down versions of tunes from his extensive catalogue. One of the best parts was they (Alejandro, drummer and keyboard/violin) came off the stage and gathered in the crowd to sing a couple of acoustic numbers -- Something Blue and the Speed of the Sound of Loneliness (everyone knows John Prine). We caught him a couple of weeks ago at the Moody Theatre for a Celebration of Texas Songs. A nice contrast between this small bar and the huge theatre. We prefer honky-tonks in Austin ... at least they don't take your camera away. Today I've brought my small pocket camera (a Canon G11) rather than my DSLR. Either would have been fine.

We have two women near our our age who are sharing our table. They are devoted fans who were first in line and seem to be simply mad for Alejandro. They're both teachers, one is now retired and had spent her time in Uvalde (see 2022 Uvalde School Shooting) where her three children were raised and went to school. We talk about the shooting, how just awful it was. Her friend is from El Paso and reminds us of the 2019 Walmart Shooting there. We spend some time talking about health care (how expensive it is here) and how poorly teachers, and especially retired teachers, are paid in Texas. 

But, we also get a line on an interesting travel suggestion. Apparently, in San Marcos, there's a spring fed swimming hole where it's always 72F — something like Barton Springs. If the weather warms we might take a dip!